Understand

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Taiwan has been populated for thousands of years by more than a dozen aboriginal tribes. Written history begins with the partial colonization of Taiwan by the Spaniards and then the Dutch in the early 17th century. (The old name of Taiwan, Formosa, comes from the Portuguese Ilse Formosa for "beautiful island".) Han Chinese immigrants who had trickled in since the end of the Yuan dynasty (1300s) arrived in larger numbers during the domestic turmoil surrounding the decline of the Ming Dynasty. Although controlled by the Dutch, the Ming loyalist Koxinga defeated the Dutch garrisons and set up Taiwan as a rump Ming Empire with the hope of reconquering Qing China. His son surrendered to the Qing in the late 1600s. Although contact between China and Taiwan dates back thousands of years, it was not until larger numbers of Han residents arrived during the Ming and Qing dynasties that Taiwan was formally integrated into China as part of Fujian province. It became a separate province in 1885. Defeated by the Japanese, the Qing Empire ceded Taiwan to Japan under the terms of the treaty of Shimonoseki. Japan ruled the island until 1945, and exerted profound influences on its development. Much of the Japanese-built infrastructure can still be seen on the island today, and has been in fact continuously used up to the present day (e.g. rail-road crossing gates, administrative buildings, and the old port at Kaohsiung).

In the early 20th century, the Nationalists (Kuomintang, KMT) and Communists fought a major civil war in China. Although the two sides were briefly united against Japan during World War II, they quickly began fighting again after the war was over. Eventually, the Communists were victorious. The Nationalist government, the remnant of their army, and hundreds of thousands of supporters fled to Taiwan. From Taipei, they continued to assert their right as the sole legitimate government of all China. Initially repressive, the government began to loosen control under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Ching-kuo. Democratization began in earnest through the 1980s and 1990s, culminating with the first direct presidential elections in 1996, and the first peaceful transition of power between two political parties in 2000.

Taiwanese politics remain dominated by the issue of relations between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China, which still claims Taiwan as a "renegade province" and regularly threatens military action if Taiwan attempts to break away from the current awkward One China status quo, where both sides agree that there is only one Chinese nation, but disagree on whether that one nation is governed by the PRC or the ROC. To summarize a very complex situation, the Pan-Blue group spearheaded by the KMT supports eventual unification with the mainland, while the Pan-Green group led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supports eventual independence. The split extends down to trivial issues like Chinese romanization — the KMT prefers the mainland's hanyu pinyin, the DPP prefers a Taiwan-made variant called tongyong pinyin — and political demonstrations and rallies, always turbulent, on...